Stopping A Potential King Kong II

Last week when I wrote about my first round win in the Marshall Amateur Team tournament I mentioned in passing that King Kong beat me again. But then again since the post got zero comments, I guess no one was paying any attention. What? Are my wins too boring to merit discussion? Or is losing more entertaining? One blogger who I can't remember (senior moment) mentioned after posting a few nice wins, it was time to get back to analysis. But before I entertain you with another loss to King Kong, here is a moment of redemption.

When I played in the Friday Quads in October I got matched up against Mike, a kid from one of my lunch time chess classes. To put it mildly, I played like a f#$%-ing moron. This is the final position after White's 18th move. Unfortunately I'm Black in this lovely position. Fritz can't help but to point out how toast Black is.

One thing that is good about Mike, is he's a very sweet kid who doesn't show people up. He did not make a big deal about it. When it came up in one of our classes he did not humiliate me by saying how quickly I lost. He wasn't even the one who brought it up. One of the other kids from that class had played in the same tournament. He was the one who mentioned it when kids in class were discussing how good Mike is. Mike has a 1600 rating. Maybe when he passes me, I'll let him teach the class!

Nice kid or not, I still wanted payback. Also I don't need another 10 year old to become "King Kong II". Once somebody starts beating you a few times in a row he starts to think he has your number. With these kids, I want an unlisted number!



I have to admit I feel fortunate to have won this game. He got the better of me out of the opening. After 15 moves all my pieces were sitting on the first and second ranks. Visions of Godzilla started appearing in my head. I traded off pieces to free up space. Also I was trying to work on the isolated e pawn and his doubled pawns to the queenside. I had a moment of panic when he played 28...Rd1+. I'm thinking "Oh, crap I have to play Rxd1, and I lose my queen!" Fortunately I got my composure back and played 29. Kh2. After the queens were traded we had a flurry of pawn captures, where I was able to win a pawn. The other thing that was working in my favor was a significant time advantage. He had less then a minute so he didn't have time to find the best moves. When I attacked his rook with 33. Kg1, 33...e3 was probably his best shot. Having the passed pawn on my third rank would have been annoying though Fritz still gives White a bit of an edge.

For a change I was not the one in horrendous time trouble. I was able to reap the benefits of my opponent having 10 seconds left, and missing the ugliness of 35...Bh7. 36. Rb8+. It was only a matter of time before I win the pinned bishop, and can march the a and b pawns up the board. That would become unnecessary as he flagged on move 47. I dodged a big bullet with that win. The big test will come the next time I have Black against him.

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

I think I'm getting senile. This is the third Thursday out of four that I have forgotten to put something in my "Don't Need a Set Chess Bag". I'm sure most of you are asking yourselves "What in the hell is a Don't Need a Set Chess Bag?" True confession time! Despite the fact that I play a game where over 95% of the participants are men, I do very woman-like things such as having multitudinous purses and bags for various occasions and purposes. Any of my male readers who are married or have a female significant knows what I'm talking about. They know better then to ask "Why do you need another purse dear?" (Male readers may be redundant, since according to Chess Tyro there aren't many female chess bloggers.

I have my regular chess bag that I take to tournaments and chess clubs where there are not sets provided. This bag has my tournament set, roll up board, a chess clock, assorted writing instruments, and a pair of reading glasses in it at all times. My Don't Need a Set Bag has another clock, key card to the Marshall, another pair of reading glasses, and my subway card in it, but no chess set. This is the bag I take to the Marshall and to WCA since both these venues have sets and boards already set up. Items that go back and forth between the two bags are my Mon Roi, iPod, and a little notebook that I keep results, final times, and sometimes some train ride analysis.

This system works out pretty well for me. I don't have to drag a set and board to places where I don't need them, and I have a clock in both bags so I don't have to worry about that. I get myself in trouble when I'm recharging either my Mon Roi, or my iPod. I also get in trouble if I move the clock from my Don't Need a Set Bag for some reason. Three weeks ago I left the Mon Roi at home because I was charging it, and forgot to put it back in the bag. Everyone kept asking me "Where's your scorekeeping thingy? Did it break?" Despite using it for almost a year now, I still remember how to keep score by hand. In fact I think my hand written notation has improved. Go figure!

Last week I very carefully made sure I had put the Mon Roi in the bag, especially because I had managed to forget on it Monday night, had to notate by hand again, and had severe time management issues that were acerbated by having to write. So that Thursday I sit down for my first round game, pull out my trusty Mon Roi, reach for my clock, and it's not there! I forgot that on Tuesday I had attended a chess team season kick-off party, and brought the clock for blitz and bughouse in a different bag. Just my luck. The week I forget my digital clock is the week Steve is not there with his supply of digital clocks. My opponent didn't have a clock so we ended out using one of the club's old BHB analog clocks. Frank Brady had just donated some brand new digital clocks to the club, but neither the manager or I knew how to set them. I have enough trouble setting the Chronos for anything besides what I have stored in memory! Playing with no time delay ended out being a non-issue because I got mated on the 26th move. Ouch!

So yesterday I very carefully double checked my bag to make sure I had everything I needed. Clock: check, Mon Roi: check, Reading glasses: check, note book: check, metro card: check, card key:check, chocolate:check, sandwich:check, snacks: check, reading material for train ride: check. All systems go. Get in the car to go to my next class, and half way there I realize I forgot my iPod. No turning back. No music to drown out the noise. Hopefully John Jacob Jingle Heimerschmidt would not be the music de jour. So what else did I manage to forget besides the iPod? The stylus to the Mon Roi. No stylus? No problem! I used a pen. No, I didn't write my moves down the old fashioned way. I just used the pen as a stylus.

Next Thursday I will not forget anything! Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, so I can be thankful that I won't lose any chess games on that day.

Knightmare on West 10th St.

The hardest thing about playing after a crushing loss is trying to forget about it, and move on. So even though I got to sleep on it, and try to start fresh I have trouble leaving it behind. It doesn’t help that I now have to play the higher rated 11 year old son who I’m 0-4 against. I don’t consider him one of those proverbial monkeys on my back. He’s young, out-rates me by almost 300 points and will probably become a master in the next few years.

All the studying of tactics, openings, endgames etc, does not prepare you for the battle of your mind. How one rebounds after a horrific blunder is probably worth a class. I can think about one instance where the inability to bounce back after a crushing loss cost me 67 rating points in one tournament. I know there have been others. That particular incident from 1989 stands out, because I had mate in two. I had worked the whole thing out, knew exactly what I needed to do, and was expecting the opponent to resign. I had walked away from the board, gave a friend "thumbs up", sat down, and when he didn't resign I forgot the moves. I lost about 12 moves later. I came back the next day and lost both games. In a tournament where I was the number 3 player I went 0-4. The only reason I didn't lose more points was because they had just put 100 point floors so I could only drop to 1845.

Often when I write an entry for my blog it takes several days before I complete it and publish. This I started on Sunday night, and here it is Tuesday. I mention this because tonight Paul Hoffman was at the Marshall Chess Club for a Q&A and book signing. I bought the book and started reading it on the train ride back. In the first chapter of his book KING'S GAMBIT: A SON, A FATHER, AND THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS GAME he talks about the same subject. "The world's top grandmasters are successful in part because they are able to recover from devastating losses. Every player, even Gary Kasparov, collapses in the odd game, but he has the inner strength to pull himself together and not let defeat unduly interfere with his subsequent concentration and performance."

So I guess perhaps I was being overly conservative in my assessment of the importance of psychological inner strength. So how did I rebound from Saturdays' crushing loss? I sucked. It didn't help that on the 7th move I made a dumb queen move that cost me a pawn on move 8. So not only was I angry about Saturday's game, I was angry at myself for making an error that I've made in previous games. On the 23rd move I lost another pawn. By move 35 we're in a rook and pawns ending. He has reached over for the black queen and set it down in front of him. That just got me more aggravated since my doing it the night before preceded my meltdown. Seeing him do the same action that I did in my game against his dad just reminded me of how cocky and unfocused I had been the night before. So here he is being the cocky little kid, but unlike me he doesn't screw up the won ending.

As we traded down he kept fiddling with the black queen sitting in front of him. I'd like to think that it wasn't intentional on his part, but the more he did it the more I was seething inside. Jay thought he was being obnoxious, but I'd like to think it was the twitchiness of an 11 year old kid. He gave me back one of the pawns and I was hoping perhaps I could hold on for a draw, but it came down to a classic Lucena Position. He played it perfectly, building the rook bridge to finally block my checks.

After move 64 we reached this position:

Jay thought maybe I could draw by "passing" with Rf7, but he simply will check on d4 and still set up the bridge. The game actually continued 65.Kd2 Ra2+ 66.Kd3 Ke1 67.Re8 Kd1 68.Rf8 Ra3+ 69.Kd4 Ke2 70.Re8+ Kf3 71.Rf8 Kg2 72.Rg8+ Rg3. Knowing that stopping the pawn would cost me my rook I resigned. At this point my rage is boiling over, and all I really want to do is throw pieces around, burst in tears, scream and go find mommy. Little kids can do that because they're children, and children can't always handle losing well. Even grandmasters can have major meltdowns, and get away with it because they're grandmasters. However, 50 something B players can't do that sort of thing without people saying "what a jerk!"

I suppose that's why internet chess appeals to certain people. They can curse at their screen, throw their mouse around, pound their fists, or any thing else they want to do. The opponent isn't going to know what's happening on the other side. For me, I want the human contact, even though in situations like this I might be better off hiding behind a screen name where I can be just another somebody in cyberspace.

It's funny how such anger can mess with one's thought processes, and make it hard to see what is really happening in a particular position. In the last round I'm black against Joe Felber rated 2000. I've known Joe since 1976 when we both were living in Baltimore and attending some of the same tournaments, but this was the first time we actually have played each other. I was still in a totally foul mood from the morning loss that was not helped with being given the wrong salad dressing when I got lunch, and Aleksandr continually coming over to see what I was doing on my computer between rounds. "I vant to be left alone!"

So here I am still in a rage, barely able to think straight, and trying to appear calm. Anger can really cloud one's judgement. We reach this position.

I'm thinking Joe has a killer move, and that if he makes it I might as well resign. I'm seeing phantoms, and as he's thinking about his move I keep looking at my watch and thinking "If he plays 25. Nf6+ I'm going to get crushed, so if I resign I can make the express train, and get home in time for the online hearts tournament." The more he thinks the more I'm convinced I'm going to lose. It turns out 25. Nf6 is nothing, but I didn't realize it at the time. Instead he played 25. Nd6. That move is annoying, but I hang on, and in the process pick up another pawn.

The anger has faded, but now it's been replaced by fear. In this case the fear of blowing another game. It doesn't help that people keep coming over and watch the game. Aleksandr keeps coming over, and standing too close. I keep using hand signals to tell him to back up. Finally I tell him, "Stay back. You're standing too close." I don't mind people watching, but when they hover next to my right side I find it annoying. I think it's because I want my space where I have my scoresheet. Also I almost feel like he's bringing me bad luck. He kept coming and watching my game against his dad, and then I lost to him in the morning round. I don't recall him watching my first round game that I won. Though that game I was sitting on the bench against the wall. Sitting there one does not have to worry about spectators being on one's back. (Note to self: Next tournament take sit on the bench even if it means switching the board around.)

Here's a classic case of nothing to fear, but fear itself.

I'm seeing ghosts again. I didn't want him to play 46. Rxd8, because I was afraid after I play 46...Rxd8 that he'll play 47. d7. What I was missing was the pawn is pinned to his queen. So instead of making a hiding place for my king with 45...h5, I play Rxc8. The game continues 46. Qxc8+Kg7 47. Qc3+ Qf6 48. Qc6 Qe6 49. Qc3+ Kf8 50. Qh8+ Qg8 51. Qe5 Qg7 52. Qc5 Qf7 53. Qc3 Qe6 54. Qh8+ Qg8 1/2-1/2 I was too afraid to let him chase my king out so I repeated the position.

Emotions are a tough thing to control. Maybe I wouldn't be so affected by them if I played chess on the internet.

Not The New York Knights: Round 2

The next round we played the team called Alec Ostrovskiy. The team consisted of Alec Getz and Anotoliy Ostrovskiy. Anotoliy is the father of another talented kid named Aleksandr, hence the team name. Alek was playing on a different team with Irenya Zenyuk. They are the top rated team. Anotoliy and I have played two times with a draw and a loss. He was the house player at the NY State Championship who took me apart the round I got the bye.

Jay beat Alec fairly quickly so it came down to my game. It was very drawish, and that’s all I needed for us to win the match. He had the bishop pair, but I had a centralized knight so I thought I had very good drawing chances. We eventually traded off the dark squared bishops. I was a little nervous because all my pawns were on light squares, but my knight was making it hard for him to try to get behind my pawns. Eventually he traded the bishop for the knight. I think he was hoping I’d take with the b pawn giving him the outside passed pawn. I knew that lost, so I wisely took with the c pawn.

I was really pleased with how I was playing up this point. I was counting squares right for possible pawn races. I was finding the right square for my king when I had to back off. My first opportunity for a potential pawn race I counted and determined he would queen two moves ahead, so I knew I had to retreat the king instead. It’s amazing how much easier it is to calculated these endings with time on the clock. (Note to self: Play more slow tournaments!)

So we reached this position.

I looked at several different possibilities such as Kd4, followed by Ke3. I calculated the pawn race if I push c4 and he plays b4. I promote one move earlier, and get to check on a1 forcing his king to the b file. Qb1+, and I skewer the queen on b8. Seeing that this variation is simple to count and wins, I push the pawn to c4, and then do one of those annoying things that cocky little kids do. I reached over and got a black queen for the anticipated promotion. I'm doing mental somersaults in my head. I'm so pumped because I'm going to be 2-0 in a tournament that I'm one of the lowest rated players. My opponent pushed b4, just as I had anticipated. I think I used about 2 seconds of the delay and immediately pushed c3. This move is a major mistake. All I have to do is play Kd4! I had around 40 minutes left and my opponent had around 10 so there was no need to make the move so fast. Instead of playing the anticipated b5, he played Kb3! At this point I have a major meltdown. I’ve thrown away the win with my hasty pawn push. I still have a draw after 49…Kd4. 50. Kc2, Kc4, 51. b5, Kxb5, 52. Kxc3, Kc5, 52. Kd3, Kd5, 53. Kc3, Kc5.

I’m so angry at this point that I can’t even see Kd4. I put the black queen back on the other table, knowing that I had been presumptuous to take it so soon. I just start shaking my head, and tapping my Mon Roi stylus on my hand. I get up, I sit down. I couldn't believe I did such a stupid thing. In my rage I push b2??, and walk out of the playing room. This move just loses. He takes the pawn on c2. I have to give up my hard earned opposition to go chase down his pawn. The rest of the games goes like this. 50.Kxc2 Kc4 51.b5 Kxb5 52.Kd3 Kc5 53.Ke4 Kd6 54.Kxf4 Ke6 55.Kg5 Ke5 56.f4+ Ke6 57.Kg6 Ke7 58.f5 Kf8 59.Kf6 Kg8 60.Ke7 Kg7 61.f6+ Kg6 62.f7 12 moves later with him on the verge of promoting and no stalemate possibilities I resign in disgust. So instead of going into round 3 against the top rated team with the same 2-0 score we have 1.5. Instead of me being on the top of the world with a 2-0 score, I'm 1-1 and mad as hell. If it had been game/30 and I had 4 seconds left then I wouldn't have been so pissed off. I would have been able to blame it on time pressure, and moved on. I had 40 freaking minutes!! Total loss of focus.

"Not The New York Knights" Round 1

This weekend the Marshall Chess Club is having its second 2 player Amateur Team Tournament. The team average had to be under 2200. The time limit is Game/2 hours which is a nice change of pace from "chess crack". I hooked up with IM Jay Bonin and he decided our team should be called "Not The New York Knights". I thought maybe we should be the LT Fan Club in honor of my inability to beat Larry, and Larry's inability to beat Jay. However we went with Jay's name. There are 9 teams entered, and our team is ranked number three. In the first round we got paired down against a team with two players whose first and last names had about 10 letters each in them. I thought they should have called their team "Alphabet Soup", or maybe "Vanna White's Letter Stash". We won the match 2-0. My first round game was very interesting. We reached this position. With it being my move as White.



I took 17 minutes on the move 23 Qa3. It's sort of an insane looking move because stuff is hanging all over the place. My bishop on d2 is unguarded, and the pawn on b4 is pinned. 23...a5 looks really annoying, so that's what I spent the time looking at. Just how annoying is it? I looked at 24. Nc4, ab, 25. Nxd6, ba3, 26. Nxe8, Rxe8. I figured there was no way black wanted to play that line. I figured he'd retreat the queen to either b8 or f8. I think I was seeing ghosts because I thought 24...Qb8 would be dangerous for me because he could push e3 and I can't play fxe3. In reality e3 is covered enough. The game proceeded 24. Nc4, Qf8, 25. 25. Nxa5, b5, 26. axb5, cxb5 27. Rec1, Nb6, 28 Rxc8, Rxc8, 29. Rc1 Nc4, 30. Nxc4, bxc4, 31. Bc3, e3, 32. f4 I debated this move for awhile. I was considering 32. Bd5+, Kh8, 33. Bxg7+, Kxg7, 34. Qc3+. Instead I played it safe with f4 to avoid the one cheap shot on f2 that e3 was threatening. Black proceeded to play probably the worst move on the board. Even though I have a significant time advantage of 26 to 9 minutes, there is still a lot of time. He played 32...Bh6?? I did a brief double take to make sure I wasn't missing something, but 33. Bd5! is a killer now. Good bye queen. He resigned.

I was genuinely pleased with this game. It was my second nice win in two days. Though sandwiched between the nice two wins was Alexandra Wiener paying me back for the two defeats over the summer, and King Kong jumping on my hastily played dumb ass recapture in a position where I was attacking and got a little overconfident. (That's a new one for me!)

Sorry Boys, Not a Thong But,,,,

the closest thing you'll get to see me wearing that is skimpier then my normal chess playing attire:

This is me completing the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco on October 21st. You can read here about why I do these crazy races. This is not a plug. I'm done for this year. Next year maybe I'll make a shameless plug.

This hopefully is is more attractive then my butt ugly chess games. Unfortunatetly it it doesn't quite rank up there with Dutch Defense's hot babes pics.

This is the offshoot of a bunch of comments on Hardcore Pawnography's blog. It's a classic case of when the comments take on a life of their own. Blame it on Liquid Egg Product for his merchandising suggestions. No, I will not be offering coffee mugs, teeshirts, or a lifesize blow up of this photo on Cafe Press.

King Kong - Game 2

Here's my second game again "Kevin Kong". There was nothing special about this particular tournament. Since his big breakthrough in February his rating had been bouncing back and forth between low 1400s and high 1300s. In the first round both of us got paired up and lost. I just missed the break so I played the number 1 seed and lost. Kevin was the lowest in the whole tournament. One upset and two late entries forced the second round pairing of the two of us.

This time I had the white pieces so I was pretty confident that I could get payback in the rematch.




I like my position out of the opening, but I guess I expected to be able to take advantage of the isolated d pawn. As I looked at the position today I thought maybe allowing the d pawn to become passed with 19. e4 was a mistake. However Fritz gave every line as equal. It wasn't until 21. exf5 that Fritz started giving black a small advantage. Once again he had a time advantage of roughly 4 minutes at move 25. 29. Bf3 is the last move I wrote down. Even though the passed pawn is a pain in the ass it's not crushing. Most of the continuations that Fritz suggested were equal or equal over plus for black.

This is the final position:

I have no idea how we arrived at this position, but somewhere in the time scramble I got rid of the pesky passer, but dropped a pawn, and as my time ran out the queens were being forced off the board. I don't know how many moves we played once we stopped keeping score. I drew up the diagram at the end. For all I know I left out a piece and maybe his bishop is defended by more then his queen and I'm losing my queen. If I'm only down the pawn going into the bishop versus knight ending it seems like I have drawing chances. If he doesn't choose to trade queens I still have problems. However when the digital clock reads 00:00 the board doesn't matter unless you have mate or the opponent lacks mating material.